For the first time in the Fellowship’s 30-year history, Socrates turned to its alumni network to nominate the next generation of artists, selecting ten fellows for an expanded 2026–2028 cycle.
The season also introduces Homecoming, a new alumni series honoring artists foundational to the Park’s legacy.
- Artists Choose Artists: The Socrates Annual Fellowship Anniversary | On View: June 2026 through April 2028
- Homecoming: Chakaia Booker | On View: May 2026 through April 2027
- Homecoming: Sanford Biggers | On View: July 2026 through June 2027
- Reclaimed Futures: Socrates & Materials for the Arts | On View: August 2026 through April 2027
- Summer Solstice & Fellowship Opening Celebration | Sunday, June 21, 2026, 5:00–8:30 PM | Free with RSVP
- Location: Socrates Sculpture Park, 32-01 Vernon Boulevard, Long Island City, NY 11106
Long Island City, NY (APRIL 6, 2026) — Socrates Sculpture Park announces its 2026 season, marking the Park’s 40th anniversary with a constellation of new exhibitions, commissions, and public programs guided by a single animating idea: Begin Again. What started in 1986 as an act of radical land reclamation, the transformation of an illegal dumpsite into a site for artistic experimentation, continues four decades later through programs that extend the Park’s founding commitment to artists, community, and public art as essential to civic health and well-being.
At the center of this anniversary season is Artists Choose Artists: The Socrates Annual Fellowship Anniversary, a landmark reimagining of the Park’s longest-running artist program. For the first time in the Fellowship’s 30-year history, Socrates turned to its alumni network to shape the program’s next chapter. In a nomination-based process that echoes Artists Choose Artists, the Park’s third-ever exhibition in 1987, more than 100 former fellows and exhibiting artists were invited to nominate peers for whom the Fellowship would represent a pivotal opportunity. The result is a cohort of ten artists whose practices span sculpture, installation, ceramics, weaving, community-engaged practice, and ecological inquiry.
“Socrates was built by artists as a platform to nurture their careers and to co-author what the Park could become in collaboration with Mark di Suvero, our founder. That has always been the fundamental truth of this place,” said Shaun Leonardo, Artist and Executive Director, Socrates Sculpture Park. “For our 40th anniversary, we honor that truth by asking the artists who shaped this Park to help determine its future. Artists Choose Artists is not simply a new selection model, it is a return to the spirit that founded Socrates, and an invitation to begin again with the voices that are central to our origin and will help determine our work into the future. The ten fellows in this cohort carry forward a lineage of experimentation, care, and public commitment that has defined this site for four decades. We are proud to support and present their work.”
2026 – 2028 Socrates Annual Fellows
The 2026–2028 Artist Fellows are Mrinalini Aggarwal, Cynthia Alberto, Francheska Alcántara, Josué Guarionex, Xayvier Haughton, Vaishnavi Ilankamban, Manami Ishimura, Jeremy John Kaplan, Nicole Mouriño, and Andrew Robinson. Selected for the artistic merit of their work and their projects’ potential to respond to the social, ecological, and historical dimensions of the Park, the fellows will engage on individualized timelines, choosing their own seasons for research, fabrication, installation, and exhibition between Spring 2026 and Fall 2028. Projects will accumulate in the Park across the two-year cycle, offering audiences a living record of sustained artistic development.
This expanded model also reflects a deeper institutional investment in artists. Beginning in 2026, each Fellow will receive a $10,000 production grant, a $4,000 artist honorarium, access to technical services and production support valued between $8,000 and $10,000, and an additional fund reserved for individualized support based on each artist’s needs.
Fellowship Anniversary projects were selected from over 100 submissions by a committee comprising Suhaly Bautista-Carolina, Chief of Programs and Partnerships at the American LGBTQ+ Museum; kier blake, Co-Founder and Director of NYC Programs at Earth Convergence; Carlos Jiménez Cahua, Artist and Socrates Fellow 2018; Kimberly Chou Tsun An, Artist and Socrates Fellow 2024; Dave Harper, Executive Director of the New York City AIDS Memorial; Jamie Maleszka-Tate, Director of Creative Arts at The Fortune Society; Prerana Reddy, Associate Director for Artist Programs at Recess; and Sofia Reeser del Rio, Curator and Associate Director of Programs at The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center.
Sofia Reeser del Rio, curator, writer and educator & Fellowship Anniversary juror said: “It was an honor to contribute to Socrates Sculpture Park’s 40th anniversary, a pivotal moment in its ongoing commitment to artists, public space, and community. The jury process was both rigorous and inspiring; the strength of proposals made selection especially challenging, and it was a privilege to be in dialogue with fellow jurors around such thoughtful and ambitious proposals.”
Homecoming
The 40th anniversary season also introduces Homecoming, a new series of engagements inviting alumni artists to return to the Park that helped shape their practices.
The first Homecoming installation brings internationally acclaimed sculptor Chakaia Booker back to Socrates with an exhibition of two monumental works, Serendipity (1998) and Gridlock (2008), on view from May 2026 through April 2027. The series continues with Sanford Biggers, whose Unsui (Mirror) and early Socrates work Terra Mandala (2001) will be on view from July 2026 through June 2027. Additional details regarding Homecoming installations will be announced through the season.
Reclaimed Futures: Socrates & Materials for the Arts
Since the earliest days of the Park, Materials for the Arts (MFTA), New York City’s premier creative reuse center, has served as a close partner, providing materials for artists’ projects and community-based programming. For its 40th anniversary, Socrates honors this relationship with a new series of co-commissions offering MFTA artists-in-residence the opportunity to extend their studio practices into the public realm. The first of these collaboratively supported projects is by artist sTo Len, on view from August 2026 through April 2027.
2026 Public Programming Season
Complimenting its exhibition program, Socrates announces a full season of free public programming beginning in April and running through the fall.
The season opens with the fifth annual Earth Month Convergence (April 18–19), a youth-led gathering co-presented with Earth Convergence that brings together organizers, educators, artists, healers, and families around land stewardship, food justice, and cultural memory. From there, the calendar unfolds across months of performance, education, and community activation including the Metropolitan Opera’s annual free SummerStage concert; Crossroads, a two-evening interdisciplinary performance series presented by Pioneers Go East Collective; Ballet Folklórico Mexicano de Nueva York’s annual Guelaguetza Festival; Cuerpxs en Resonancia, a three-part bilingual movement-and-sound workshop series presented by MexFest during Hispanic Heritage Month; Hip to Hip Theatre Company’s free Shakespeare in the Park productions of Macbeth and As You Like It; the Queensboro Dance Festival; Field Guide workshops co-presented with The Noguchi Museum; a Climate Week community cleanup; Astoria Pride’s Picnic in the Park; and Party in the Park: Trio Under the Triboro, a day-long performance art festival marking the shared anniversaries of Franklin Furnace, Materials for the Arts, and Socrates Sculpture Park.
The Park’s Healthy Living Series returns for the summer with free weekly sunset meditation sessions led by Mindful Astoria (Tuesdays, May through August), Vinyasa yoga classes with Astoria Yoga (Sundays, June through September), and free kayaking at Hallet’s Cove with LIC Community Boathouse (weekends, June through September). The season closes with the beloved Halloween Harvest Festival on October 31. All programs are free and open to the public. For the complete schedule and RSVP details, click here.
About the 2026–2028 Artist Fellows
Spring 2026 Cohort
Josué Guarionex is a self-taught sculptor whose formation began within his family: his mother is a fashion designer and his father was a woodworker and luthier. La Carreta Made a U-Turn takes its title from Jesús “Tato” Laviera’s 1979 poetry collection, written in response to René Marqués’s play La Carreta (1953). The sculpture, a full-scale cart constructed in modular wood and iron and shaped into a “U,” symbolizes the constant movement of migrant communities.
Jeremy John Kaplan is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice centers on public space as a site of collective endurance and durational commitment. Rest in Tension unifies basketball goals with weathered nets collected from neighboring public parks that are woven into a single suspended hammock. Carrying the embedded history of community play, the piece emphasizes interconnectivity, reciprocity, and shared support through interaction and play.
Nicole Mouriño is a Cuban-American artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Her large-scale paintings, initiated in charcoal, sealed in polymers, and finished in oil or cement, depict merging understandings of beauty, desire, and identity. Massage Core is a communal sculpture designed for anxiety reduction, massage, pain management, and physical therapy. Composed of ceramic tiles, its textured surface draws a parallel to the bumpy pillars of MTA subway platforms and their use by the artist as a personal massage tool.
Fall 2026 Cohort
Xayvier Haughton is a Jamaican-born visual artist who merges traditional and contemporary techniques to create powerful altarpieces and installations that reflect a creolized spiritual and aesthetic language within Caribbean identity. Sentinel of Passage is a monumental sculptural figure that stands as witness to an enduring presence shaped by migration, labor, and cultural inheritance. Constructed from steel, reclaimed wood, and concrete, the hybrid structure draws from Caribbean craft traditions and urban construction histories, holding multiple temporalities within a single body.
Andrew Robinson emerged from the geography of 1980s New York, a landscape of graffiti, ACT UP, and the Tompkins Square riots, finding a lifeline in an apprenticeship at an Anglo-Japanese ceramics studio that provided the fundamental knowledge of kiln-building and the discipline of daily making. Bellwether is a practical structure and a call to action featuring a steel armature reminiscent of galvanized pipe playground jungle gyms, supporting a series of ceramic bells. Working with local communities and public school students, Robinson employs maiolica glazes, a tradition dating back 2,000 years to Persia and adapted by cultures from Italy to the Americas.
Spring 2027 Cohort
Francheska Alcántara is a queer Afro-Caribbean interdisciplinary artist whose work plays at the intersection of gesture, ritual, and myth within the Black diasporic imagination. She reworks and transforms artifacts including brown paper bags, Hispano cuaba soap, dominoes, and organic residues through sewing, folding, cutting, burning, and layering, interrogating how these materials create social meaning and cultural norms. I Pulse, I Sway, I Play is a sculpture series that reimagines the familiar domino as both game and cultural artifact. The installation features five custom-made dominoes ranging in height from three to six feet, constructed from metal, foam, mesh, cement, and paint.
Vaishnavi (Vaishu) Ilankamban is a New York-based woodworker and visual artist working primarily in sculpture and installation. If you stand here you will hear her is a sculptural installation consisting of a series of concrete drainage stones with polished flat surfaces that subtly reflect the sky. Referencing an ancient drainage system, the work alludes to Sunswick Creek’s prior existence in the Park and its submergence into pipes underground.
Fall 2027 Cohort
Mrinalini Aggarwal makes drawings and sculptures from foraged trees and a bioplastic she synthesizes from waste grass clippings. Weaving together biophilosophy, decolonial theory, architecture, material science, and speculative fiction, her work interrogates the capitalist and colonial logics embedded in the global lawn. FIELD [monsoon] is an architectural fragment becoming living organism: arched walls infilled with translucent drawings of grass and trees, a thatched roof that gathers rain, and a plant cradled in a vessel of grass-based bioplastic that gradually outgrows and ruptures its container. Recalling monsoon architectures of South Asia, the sculpture becomes a metabolic structure whose bioplastic walls, embedded with seeds, decompose into soil as the plant thrives, proposing an aesthetic of life rooted in vegetal time.
Cynthia Alberto is an artist, designer, and the founder of the Brooklyn-based healing arts studio Weaving Hand. Her interdisciplinary practice bridges traditional and contemporary weaving techniques through social practice and community-based engagement. Weaving House – A Home of Sanctuary is a site-specific, participatory installation centered on a large communal loom surrounded by smaller tapestry looms available for public use. Functioning as both artwork and refuge, the Weaving House offers a space to slow down and reconnect through the tactile, rhythmic act of weaving.
Manami Ishimura is a visual artist and educator whose work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the Shiga Kogen Roman Art Museum (Nagano, Japan), Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, and the Fresh Winds Art Biennale (Suðurnesjabaer, Iceland). Weaving the Unseen is a series of sculptures inspired by komomaki (菰巻き), a Japanese horticultural technique in which trees are wrapped with woven straw mats for protection during seasonal change. Requiring communal labor, this ancient practice cultivates harmony between care, time, and ecology within the urban context of Queens.
About the Socrates Annual Fellowship
For three decades, the Socrates Annual Fellowship has embodied the Park’s founding commitment to artistic experimentation, excellence, and care. The Fellowship remains one of New York City’s most vital platforms for early career artists to create ambitious public works and develop their practices in dialogue with community, environment, and place. Since 2001, 284 artists have participated in the Fellowship, many going on to receive significant public commissions and recognition. Alumni include Sable Elyse Smith (2016), David Brooks (2009), Leilah Babirye (2018), Orly Genger (2004), Sanford Biggers (2001), and Torkwase Dyson (2015). The Fellowship Open Call will resume in the Fall of 2027.
Support
All programming at Socrates Sculpture Park is free and made possible, in part, by support from the AG Foundation, Lily Auchincloss Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Charina Endowment Fund, City Parks Foundation, Con Edison, The Cowles Charitable Trust, Sidney E. Frank Foundation, Stuart and Maxine Frankel Foundation, Ford Foundation, J. Paul Getty Trust, The Goldstone Family Foundation, William Talbott Hillman Foundation, Hyde & Watson Foundation, Kite Key Foundation, Lambent Foundation, the Leon Levy Foundation, Henry Luce Foundation, Mathis-Pfohl Foundation, Mellon Foundation, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, Molly Blank Fund, Silman, A TYLin Company, Margaret Silva Fund, TD Charitable Foundation, as well as the Socrates Sculpture Park Board of Directors, and our many generous individual donors.
Socrates’ programs are also supported, in part, by public funds from the Queens Borough President Donovan Richards; the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the New York City Council, the New York State Council on the Arts; NYC Department of Parks & Recreation; and the National Endowment for the Arts.
In-kind support is generously provided by Spacetime C.C.
Socrates Sculpture Park acknowledges the generous support provided by the Collaborative Arts Network New York (CANNY). As a coalition of small to mid-sized multidisciplinary arts organizations, CANNY is committed to strengthening the infrastructure of arts nonprofits throughout New York. For more information about CANNY, please visit https://can-ny.org/.
About Socrates Sculpture Park
Socrates Sculpture Park is an internationally recognized outdoor museum and public park located on the waterfront of Long Island City, Queens. Since 1986, when artists and community members transformed an abandoned landfill and illegal dumpsite into an open studio and exhibition space for artists, Socrates has been dedicated to supporting artists in the production and exhibition of public artworks. Today, the Park’s six-acre site serves as one of New York City’s premier destinations for free outdoor art, education, and community engagement, welcoming over 200,000 visitors annually.
Media Inquiries and Images
Contact: press@socratessculpturepark.org. | Press images are available here. | Artist headshots, and additional materials are available upon request.
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Image: Chakaia Booker, Serendipity, 1998
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Socrates Sculpture Park Announces 2025 Socrates Annual: “Up/rooted”
Long Island City, NY – Socrates Sculpture Park today announced the opening of The Socrates Annual 2025 on September 12, 2025. Featuring new commissions from the 2025 Socrates Artist Fellows—Natalia Nakazawa, Pioneers Go East Collective, Rowan Renee, Catherine Telford-Keogh, and Zipporah Camille Thompson—this year’s annual exhibition reflects the Park’s longstanding mission to support artists at every stage of their careers, invite public engagement with urgent social and environmental questions, and transform public space into a platform for imagination, dialogue, and renewal.
Responding to the theme “Up/rooted”, the 2025 Socrates Artist Fellows’ works explore the tension between dislocation and resilience—how to unearth and re-root, how to adapt and regenerate. “Up” suggests movement, aspiration, and detachment; “root” calls to the unseen networks that nourish, anchor, and connect us. Together, these projects stretch across materials and mediums—sculpture, textiles, installation, performance, and public programs—tracing how bodies and landscapes hold memory, migrate, and transform.
As with previous years, the Socrates Annual is more than an exhibition—it’s an evolving, living experience. Throughout the Fall and into Spring 2026, the works will be activated through participatory workshops, performances, storytelling sessions, and artist-led programs, many created in collaboration with local communities and cultural partners.
“As New York City experiences the increasingly visible impacts of climate change, this year’s Socrates Annual is a timely reminder of the role public art can play in shaping not just our landscapes, but our collective resilience,” said Shaun Leonardo, Socrates Co-Director. “These projects offer more than beauty and spectale—they offer blueprints for connection, care, and civic possibility. At Socrates, we see public space as a living studio, a place where artists don’t just create—they convene, challenge, and reimagine what community can be. This year’s fellows are both responding to our urgent environmental moment, and helping to weave a stronger civic fabric—rooted in creativity, dialogue, and shared stewardship of our public spaces.”
“Each year, the Socrates Annual reflects our belief that artists are essential voices in civic life—especially those who use public space to engage, provoke, and imagine new ways of being together,” Katie Dixon, Socrates Co-Director continued. “This year’s fellows remind us how art can root us in place while opening portals to the future. We’re deeply grateful to our supporters, partners, and community members who make this work possible. Their generosity allows us to amplify these visionary practices and ensure that Socrates remains a site of experimentation, joy, and belonging for all.”
Since 2001, The Socrates Annual has embodied Socrates Sculpture Park’s belief that public space is a site of transformation—not just for artists, but for communities. Each year, the fellowship supports early-career artists with mentorship and financial and technical resources to realize ambitious public art projects, while offering a space for experimentation, engagement, and exchange.
Curated by Kaitlin Garcia-Maestas, former Curator and Director of Exhibitions, Richard Morales, Director of Public Programs and Community Engagement, and facilitated by Sara Sciabbarrasi, Artist Fellow Liaison, The Socrates Annual 2025 continues the Park’s commitment to bold, responsive, and site-specific public art that engages the world we inhabit—and reimagines the one we want to build. Socrates Fellows were selected by a jury composed of Socrates staff, Bel Falleiros, Socrates alumna, and Elena Ketelsen González, Assistant Curator at MoMA PS1 .
2025 Socrates Artist Fellows and Projects
Rowan Renee (Brooklyn, NY)
Project Title: A loom for tender(ils)
Transforming the tree grove into a whimsical garden of interactive looms, A loom for tender(ils) invites the public into a gentle, meditative act of collective weaving. Drawing from years of restorative justice work, Renee uses the loom as both literal and metaphorical tool: a catalyst for healing, connection, and self-expression. Open daily for self-directed use, with special programming through the exhibition’s closing.
Pioneers Go East Collective (NYC)
Project Title: A Sea In-MOTION
Part sculpture, part performance platform, this low-carbon bamboo installation radiates from a central core, inspired by eco-feminist theories and LGBTQ+ futurity. During performances in September and October, dancers and singers animate the structure—highlighting the power of community to reimagine systems of care, resistance, and sustainability.
Catherine Telford-Keogh (Toronto/NYC)
Project Title: Cradlers
Suspended along the East River shoreline, Cradlers is a haunting, materially dense installation that merges industrial waste and fossiliferous limestone to reflect on cycles of extraction, containment, and transformation. Through a sculptural choreography of compression and release, the work draws connections between infrastructure, labor, and the fragile ecosystems along the waterfront. Catherine is the 2025 Devra Freelander Artist Fellow.
Natalia Nakazawa (Queens, NY)
Project Title: Our Stories of Migration: Dome Cartographies
Nakazawa builds on years of community storytelling to create interactive, dome-shaped “living archives” that house embroidered maps, scanned artifacts, oral histories, and collaborative zines. Through a series of family workshops and participatory installations, she centers the wisdom, resilience, and creativity of New York’s immigrant and multi-racial communities.
Zipporah Camille Thompson (Atlanta, GA)
Project Title: Spellbound
A mirrored, labyrinthine sculpture that channels the swirling force of hurricanes, Spellbound contemplates destruction, regeneration, and the sacred power of water and wind. Both grounded and celestial, the installation challenges extractive systems and offers a vision of ecological healing and transformation.
The Socrates Annual 2025 opens September 12, 2025 through April 6, 2026 and is free and open to the public daily, from 9AM to sunset. Visitors are encouraged to attend performances, workshops, and interactive events scheduled throughout the season. Visit socratessculpturepark.org for the latest updates and program calendar.
Exhibition Support
Support for The Socrates Annual exhibition and fellowship is provided by Charina Endowment Fund, the Sidney E. Frank Foundation, Devra Freelander Artist Fund, Agnes Gund, and Lambent Foundation, with in-kind support from Spacetime C.C.
This program is also supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
About Socrates Sculpture Park
For over 35 years, Socrates Sculpture Park has been an award winning model of public art production, community activism, and socially inspired place making. Over 1,200 artists have created and exhibited new works on its five waterfront acres and outdoor studio facilities. Socrates is free and open to the public 365 days a year from 9am to sunset. It is located at 32-01 Vernon Boulevard (at Broadway) in Long Island City, New York. Socrates Sculpture Park is a not for profit organization licensed by NYC Parks to manage and program Socrates Sculpture Park, a New York City public park.
Media Inquiries and Images
Press images are available here. Artist headshots, and additional materials are available upon request. Email: Socrates@itseleventhirtysix.com.
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Image: A Sea In-Motion, Alex GRAE #1, Pioneers Go East Collective
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Socrates Sculpture Park Announces 2025 Season
Festivals, events, workshops and theater — a dynamic urban space where art, nature, and community thrive
LONG ISLAND CITY, NY — Socrates Sculpture Park is pleased to announce the 2025 season of events and public programs beginning this spring. Since 1986, Socrates has championed the production and presentation of contemporary public art, alongside a robust calendar of inclusive public and educational programming. The Park is open 365 days a year and admission and programs are always free.
From Fortune Society’s Annual Arts Festival to outdoor yoga with Astoria Yoga, the Park finds its strength in mutual care and collective creativity. Socrates will kick off its 2025 season with a new program on Saturdays, April 19th and 26th. The 4th annual Earth Month Convergence (EMC) lands in Queens, with partners Start:Empowerment and Dandelions Assembly, for two days of eclectic eco-programming. Socrates’ 5 acres will offer space to build, strategize, and care for one another and the earth in the face of escalating crises. This convening of organizers, educators, artists, and healers aims to forge deeper connections, strategies, and tangible ways to tackle local and global environmental justice issues.
“Socrates Sculpture Park is a vibrant ecosystem where art, nature, and community engagement converge. We’re excited to welcome back beloved collaborators alongside new partners with our programming, harnessing the power of the arts to foster creative experiences, collaboration, and environmental awareness.” said Shaun Leonardo, Co-Director of Socrates Sculpture Park. “Our programs celebrate artistic expression and collaboration, and also highlight urban landscapes that can be both culturally and ecologically enriching year round. We cannot wait for you to join us.” echoed Katie Dixon, Co-Director of Socrates Sculpture Park.
Socrates Sculpture Park has also selected the recipients of The Socrates Annual Fellowship. This competitive program reflects the Park’s commitment to artistic experimentation and nurturing artists’ careers. The Fellowship is an important training ground for early career artists and allows the selected Fellows to gain experience creating large-scale public art, utilizing Socrates’ outdoor studio in Long Island City, Queens. Recipients were selected through an open call application process. The thematic prompt for this year was “Up/rooted,” exploring the complexities of relocation and adaptation, as well as the delicate balance between ecological preservation and community needs in pursuit of a more resilient future.
The recipients of The Socrates Annual 2025 Fellowship are Natalia Nakazawa, Pioneers Go East Collective, Rowan Renee, Catherine Telford-Keogh, and Zipporah Camille Thompson. Selected from a pool of 300 applicants, this year’s cohort reflects a diversity of artists working in varied artistic disciplines, media, and subject matter.
“Challenging the traditional individualist framework of artmaking, this year’s Artist Fellows propose visionary approaches to socially engaged and ecologically attuned worldmaking. Through reciprocal exchanges with communities and the natural world, their projects cultivate new models of collective care and resilience.” said Kaitlin Garcia-Maestas, Curator and Director of Exhibitions of Socrates Sculpture Park.
The 2025 Season at Socrates Sculpture Park begins April 2025. For the full calendar of events, programs, and educational workshops, visit socratessculpturepark.org/calendar.
Sign up for the Socrates Sculpture Park newsletter for updates and information. Socrates Sculpture Park is open 365 days a year, from 9am to sunset. Admission is free.
Image: Argenis Apolinario
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Socrates Sculpture Park Announces 2025 Annual Fellowship Open Call
Invites Early Career Artists to Propose Interdisciplinary Works in Response to the Theme “Up/rooted”
LONG ISLAND CITY, NY — Socrates Sculpture Park (Socrates, the Park) today announced its Open Call for proposals for the2025 Socrates Annual Fellowship. The Park invites early career artists to submit proposals for new public works responding to the complexities of uprooting for long-term sustainability and resilience.
For the first time, Socrates is encouraging proposals that span across creative disciplines including sculpture, performance, social practice, ecology, and more. The Socrates Annual Fellowship reflects the Park’s commitment to nurturing artists, experimentation and risk-taking, providing invaluable support for the development of ambitious public art projects. Applications are open on October 24th and must be submitted by Friday, November 15, 2024, at 11:59 PM.
The 2025 Socrates Annual Fellowship will focus on the theme “Up/rooted,” exploring the tension between dislocation and resilience. The theme considers how removal or extraction may sometimes be essential for survival, and how thoughtful relocation can foster growth, understanding, and a thriving ecosystem. As Socrates prepares for the upcoming Seawall Reconstruction Project in partnership with the City of New York, the 2025 theme invites artists to reflect on how ecological preservation and community needs intersect to foster regeneration of place. Proposals are encouraged to take a multi-disciplinary approach, creatively engaging overlooked areas of the Park and exploring the relationship between the visible and the hidden—between the nourishing systems underground and the expansive possibilities overhead.
The Fellowship culminates in The Socrates Annual, an exhibition showcasing the Fellows’ completed works from September 2025 to March 2026. Selected artists will work closely with the Park’s staff to develop production timelines and budgets, with installations occurring on a rolling basis from May to September 2025. “We are continually inspired by the innovative approaches artists bring to public art, and this year’s Fellowship theme, ‘Up/rooted,’ invites deep reflection on both ecological and social resilience.”said Kaitlin Garcia-Maestas, Curator and Director of Exhibitions at Socrates Sculpture Park. “As we navigate the transformation of our park and community in the coming months, this year’s fellowship cohort will have a unique opportunity to respond to the dual forces of disruption and regeneration. We encourage proposals that challenge conventions of public art by engaging overlooked spaces, and pushing the boundaries of how art can foster community and environmental stewardship.”
“At Socrates Sculpture Park, we have always believed that art has the power to catalyze conversation and action. The 2025 Fellowship embodies our commitment to nurturing early career artists while advancing dialogues about sustainability and community care,” said Socrates Co-Directors Katie Dixon and Shaun Leonardo. “We see the 2025 Annual Fellowship as a critical moment to bridge art and environmental resilience, allowing artists to create works that speak not only to the beauty of our landscape but also to the challenges of adapting to a changing world. We encourage artists across disciplines—whether working in sculpture, performance, ecology, or new media—to engage with our unique site and this year’s theme, exploring the intersection of art, nature, and community in ways that can inspire lasting impact.”
Socrates is renowned for its commitment to supporting public art that engages with pressing social, environmental, and cultural issues. Since 2000, the Fellowship program has worked with artists such as Leilah Babirye, Sable Elyse Smith, and Hank Willis Thomas, among others. The Socrates Annual Fellowship is open to early career artists residing in the New York tri-state area.
Socrates Annual Fellows Receive:
– Production Grant: Up to $8,000
– Artist Honorarium: $2,000
– Resources: Seven-days-a-week access to the outdoor artist studio, technical and administrative support, and collaboration with Socrates’ curatorial and public programs staff.
Important Dates:
– Application Deadline: November 15, 2024
– Finalist Notification: January 2025
– On-site Fabrication: April 2025 – August 2025
– Public Programming: May 2025 – March 2026 • Exhibition Opening: Mid-September 2025
For more information on eligibility and how to apply, visit socratessculpturepark.org/open-call-2025. To explore past works and the history of the Fellowship, visit Socrates Sculpture Park at socratessculpturepark.org.
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About Socrates Sculpture ParkFor over 35 years, Socrates Sculpture Park has been an award winning model of public art production, community activism, and socially inspired place making. Most recently Socrates was honored with the Public Art Dialogue 2023 Founders Award. Over 1,200 artists have created and exhibited new works on its five waterfront acres and outdoor studio facilities. Past exhibiting artists include Agnes Denes, Jeffrey Gibson, Guadalupe Maravilla, Virginia Overton, Jean Shin, Sable Elyse Smith, Nari Ward, Meg Webster, and Hank Willis Thomas. Socrates is free and open to the public 365 days a year from 9am to sunset. It is located at 32-01 Vernon Boulevard (at Broadway) in Long Island City, New York. Socrates Sculpture Park is a not for profit organization licensed by NYC Parks to manage and program Socrates Sculpture Park, a New York City public park.
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Socrates Sculpture Park Announces New Co-Directorship as Part of Strategic Vision for Upcoming 40th Anniversary
Katie Dixon and Shaun Leonardo to Lead Park into Next Phase of Growth and Community Engagement
QUEENS, NY — Socrates Sculpture Park (Socrates, the Park), a beloved cultural institution and public park in Long Island City, Queens, New York, is excited to announce the transition to a new co-directorship model as it prepares for its 40th anniversary in 2026.
Katie Dixon, who has led the Park since April 2023 will be joined by Shaun Leonardo, a longtime community member and former Socrates staff and Board member, to share leadership as Co-Directors. This leadership expansion marks a pivotal moment for Socrates as it deepens its impact and plans for the future.
This shift comes as part of the Park’s Practice in Public initiative, a three-year framework guiding Socrates through its next phase of growth. The co-directorship model reflects the Park’s commitment to expanding its capacity, fostering collaboration, and preparing for long-term sustainability with creative expression, public service, and environmental stewardship as its guiding principles.
Katie Dixon, who has been at the helm of Socrates as Executive Director after first serving as Interim Executive Director starting in April 2023 stated about the Park’s next chapter: “I am honored to continue my service to Socrates in this important moment for the institution and in partnership with the board and Shaun Leonardo. As we work to expand and strengthen the organization’s culture and practice, I’m mindful of the thousands of artists, activists, and community members who have built this place together over the years, many of whom still work with us today. ”
Shaun Leonardo, who has been involved with Socrates since his early professional life as a staff member and later as a Board member, is eager to return to the Park in this expanded leadership role: “I am a Queens native. And from the moment I discovered that such a magical place existed in my backyard, I knew that it would be part of my life. Little did I know that soon after achieving my graduate degree, Socrates would occupy the first decade of my young professional life. I have grown with and alongside Socrates and feel both an honor and duty to carry on its commitment to stewardship at the intersection of artistry, activism, and the environment. Engagement with our local community has always felt to me to be the heart of our work, and I could not be more thrilled to return in this capacity, to deepen our devotion to these people and this place as we move into and beyond our 40th year.”
The new Socrates co-directorship model will allow for expanded strategic visioning, deeper community collaboration, and a shared responsibility in shaping the Park’s future, particularly in the context of its upcoming 40th anniversary. The leadership structure aims to reinforce Socrates’ history of artist-led activism, environmental stewardship, and community engagement while building the foundation for the next generation of artists and leaders.
Ivana Mestrovic, President, has served on the Board of Directors for many years, stewarding the organization through tremendous growth: “As a free and open public space, Socrates Sculpture Park has long served as a vital cultural and creative hub for the Queens community and beyond. It’s a place where the realities of New York City’s most vibrant borough are reflected and celebrated through the arts. Our commitment to inclusivity and accessibility allows people from all walks of life to engage with dynamic public art, while also fostering a deep connection to our natural environment. As we face growing challenges related to climate change, the Park’s role in conservation and environmental stewardship is more important than ever—not just for New York City, but as a model for the entire country. We’re excited to see how the leadership of Katie and Shaun will continue to champion these values as we move into the next phase of Socrates’ history.”
As Socrates embarks on this transition, the Park’s staff and board are aligned in their commitment to embedding collaboration and accountability into every facet of the organization’s operations, ensuring that it remains a vibrant and essential space for public art and community engagement for decades to come.
Starting in 2025, through the lens of the Practice in Public visioning work, Socrates’ leadership will turn its focus toward planning for its 40th Anniversary in 2026. For more information about Socrates Sculpture Park, visit socratessculpturepark.org.
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ABOUT SOCRATES SCULPTURE PARK
For over 35 years, Socrates Sculpture Park has been an award winning model of public art production, community activism, and socially inspired place-making. Most recently Socrates was honored with the Public Art Dialogue 2023 Founders Award. Over 1,200 artists have created and exhibited new works on its five waterfront acres and outdoor studio facilities. Past exhibiting artists include Agnes Denes, Jeffrey Gibson, Guadalupe Maravilla, Virginia Overton, Jean Shin, Sable Elyse Smith, Nari Ward, Meg Webster, and Hank Willis Thomas.
Socrates is free and open to the public 365 days a year from 9am to sunset. It is located at 32-01 Vernon Boulevard (at Broadway) in Long Island City, New York. Socrates Sculpture Park is a not-for-profit organization licensed by NYC Parks to manage and program Socrates Sculpture Park, a New York City public park.
Katie Dixon Biography
With over two decades of experience working at the intersection of the arts, architecture, and urban planning, Katie Dixon has created cross-sector partnerships and new artist-led programming for a broad range of arts, culture and civic organizations. Her work is based in collaborative research and centers consensus-building and cooperation among many different publics, institutions, government agencies and funders.
From 2014 to 2021, as the CEO of Powerhouse Arts, Dixon established the vision for a new artist-led institution and led the redevelopment and transformation of the former BRT Power Station in Brooklyn, which was named a New York City Landmark in 2019. Dixon and her team conducted intensive workshops and consultations with artists to develop the institution’s programming, organizational structure and physical planning. Powerhouse was a response to the needs for production space, fabrication expertise and support for artists working in traditional materials that is rapidly disappearing in New York City. In addition to the institutional development, Dixon led all aspects of programming and rehabilitating the 170,000 square-foot facility designed by architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron.
Dixon served as the Director of Special Projects at Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) from 2011 to 2014 where she established public art programming initiatives in the neighborhood, including works by KAWS and David Byrne. With BAM’s executive team, she also led capital and program planning efforts to grow and expand the institution. Prior to BAM, she was the Chief of Staff at the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs leading special initiatives for the Commissioner, as well as, overseeing the agency’s $700 million capital funding portfolio. From 2007 to 2010 as the Director of Planning and Development at the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, she led the site development, arts program planning and administration of the Downtown Brooklyn Cultural District.
Dixon holds B.A. in Architecture from Yale University and a Master of International Affairs from Columbia University. She lives with her husband and daughter in Red Hook, Brooklyn.
Shaun Leonardo Biography
Shaun Leonardo has dedicated over 15 years of his professional career to arts administration at the intersection of community engagement, public programming, and experimental pedagogies. Deeply invested in processes of reciprocal exchange, Leonardo’s work flows from a belief in collaborative leadership and artistic visioning.
Leonardo’s professional life began at the Park (2005-2015) as its special events manager before expanding into the role of Socrates’ Director of Public Programs. Over 11 seasons, he envisioned and created new program initiatives and educational curriculum, including the development of the Park’s first workshop series dedicated to adults and teens and the implementation of Socrates’ first onsite and in-school high school-level, sculpture classes. His tenure was marked by collaboration with over 40 cultural and community organizations, leading to the establishment of the Park’s Healthy Living and Performance initiatives, as well as the tripling of the Park’s educational offerings.
From 2015-2017, Leonardo served at the New Museum’s first Manager of School, Youth & Community Programs, developing programs and accommodations for specific audience groups, both those under the umbrella of school partnerships, designed for high school teachers and students, and new initiatives in the area of community engagement.
From 2018-2020, Leonardo acted as Pratt Institute’s inaugural School of Art Visiting Fellow, instigating dialogues amongst students, faculty, and staff, as well as others outside the Institute, to challenge ideas on community and belonging, while shaping possibilities of ethical community engagement.
And most recently, Leonardo served as Co-Director of the Brooklyn-based Recess, helping guide the organization’s continuous evolution as an engine of social change. Shaun joined Recess in 2016, initiating the art-based diversion program Assembly as its project and curricular lead, while also acting as the project’s first facilitator. Over the course of nearly 9 years, Shaun continued to expand his role, ultimately being invited to fill the organization’s first co-directorship with founder Allison Freedman Weisberg in 2021. And during the last almost four years, Shaun took on the effort of guiding Recess through the pandemic onto thriving both programmatically and fiscally. His time was dedicated to internally operationalizing care and accountability, while pushing experimentation within the org’s external-facing programming.
He is a Brooklyn-based artist from Queens, New York City, He received his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and is a recipient of support from Creative Capital, Guggenheim Social Practice, Art for Justice and A Blade of Grass. His work has been featured at The Guggenheim Museum, the High Line, New Museum, MASS MoCA and The Bronx Museum, and profiled in the New York Times and CNN. His first major public art commission, Between Four Freedoms, premiered at Four Freedoms Park Conservancy, in the fall of 2021. Shaun lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two daughters.
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Artists embrace invasive species in The Socrates Annual 2024
On View September 14, 2024 – April 6, 2025
The opening celebration will take place on September 14, 3-6pm and is free and open to the public.
Long Island City, NY, August 14, 2024 – Socrates Sculpture Park (Socrates) presents The Socrates Annual 2024 on view September 14 through April 6, 2025. The exhibition features site-specific projects that consider the legacies of species migration juxtaposed with myths of invasion related to people, animals, and plants. Artists consider the politics of settlement and complex legacies of species migration, illuminating ancestral agricultural technologies while facilitating interactions between humans and our landscapes, in the midst of proposing symbiotic opportunities for Earth’s future inhabitants.
The Socrates Annual 2024 is the culmination of Socrates Sculpture Park’s fellowship program, awarded to nine artists selected through an open call. Since 2001, the fellowship program has supported early career artists who receive financial and technical support to realize ambitious public artworks to be included in a park-wide exhibition.
In June, Socrates unveiled four projects by Kimberly Chou Tsun An, Landon Newton, Mamoun Nukumanu, and Vick Quezada, as part of this year’s expanded fellowship. This new ecology-focused cohort of artists harnessed the peak spring and summer growing seasons to create “living” installations that engage the Park’s past, present, and future inhabitants within the former industrial wetland landscape. Incorporating and collaborating with dozens of native and introduced plant species, these ecological interventions have flourished throughout the summer and will continue to evolve with the changing seasons.
Throughout the summer, artists Jill Cohen-Nuñez*, Utsa Hazarika, Juan-Manuel Pinzon, Petra Szilagyi and Nala C. Turner have been fabricating site-specific sculptures in the Park’s open-air studio utilizing a wide range of materials including mud, clamshells, metal, clay, stone, and found wood.These five projects delve into notions of diaspora, displacement, containment and assimilation, linking human adaptability with that of other living species. Jill Cohen-Nuñez is the 2024 Devra Freelander Artist Fellow. This recognition is awarded to an artist exemplifying the artistic values of sustainability, identity, and feminism as well as an independent and adventurous spirit, all embodied by 2017 Artist Fellow Devra Freelander.
“At Socrates Sculpture Park, we challenge conventional ideas of what is possible by creating opportunities to interrogate our relationship to nature and our immediate environment. Instead of automatically assuming certain plants and other naturally occurring species are invaders, we embrace the possibility and potential of integration, highlighting the vital role these species play in regenerating our ecosystems,” Katie Dixon, Executive Director of Socrates Sculpture Park said. “Socrates has a proud history of working with artists and our local community to transform neglected space into thriving, sustainable habitat. This year’s Annual is a living testament to the power of adaptability and resilience, turning what is often disregarded into a cornerstone of our community’s ecological health.”
“The Socrates Annual 2024 reflects our commitment to ambitious, early-career artists who take bold and impressive risks. This year’s expanded fellowship underscores our dedication to decolonizing and expanding the field of outdoor sculpture by supporting artists whose material choices reflect their role as both creative practitioners and symbiotic participants in a vibrant living ecosystem.” Kaitlin Garcia-Maestas, Curator & Director of Exhibitions of Socrates Sculpture Park said, “In many ways, this year’s exhibition reads like a love letter to the Park. Collectively, these nine projects embody a profound reverence and curiosity for the ecological history of our cherished greenspace and the host of communities it serves.”
The Socrates Annual 2024 Artist Fellows were selected from over 250 applicants by a selection committee that included Eric Booker, Associate Curator at Storm King Art Center; Carlos Jiménez Cahua, Socrates Fellow, 2018; Patrick Costello, Socrates Fellow, 2020; and Brendan Parker, Senior Farm Manager at Red Hook Farms, along with Socrates Sculpture Park staff members Kaitlin Garcia-Maestas, Curator & Director of Exhibitions; Ewart Louie Jordan, Grounds Manager; Eric Mathews, Former Director of Grounds & Horticulture; Terrence McCutchen, Grounds Manager; Marisa Prefer, Former Senior Director of Park Operations.
Image Credit: “TILT (what if these plants get out)” by Landon Newton, 2024. Photo: Bob Krasner
Each Artist Fellow is awarded a $8,000 production grant, $2,000 honorarium, and three months of seven-days-a-week access to the resources and fabrication facilities of the Park’s outdoor artist studio to realize their proposed project. The Fellowship was formalized in 2000 and has included artists such as Sable Elyse Smith (2016), David Brooks (2009), Leilah Babirye (2018), Orly Genger (2004), Sanford Biggers (2001), and Torkwase Dyson (2015). Learn more about the Fellowship here.
The Socrates Annual 2024 opening celebration on Saturday, September 14 from 3pm – 5pm, is free and open to the public and will include activations and performances initiated by Artist Fellows.
For full details visit socratessculpturepark.org/the-socrates-annual-2024.
Download the exhibition press kit here.
ABOUT THE 2024 SOCRATES SCULPTURE PARK ARTIST FELLOWS
Kimberly Chou Tsun An (she/her) is a writer, cultural worker, organizer, and community artist. Her work explores the connections between people, plants, land, and ancestral and cultural practices — those we inherit, those we choose or grow into, and those we cultivate together in community. Relationships are our greatest resource. Her projects, almost always conducted in collaboration, often take the form of public programs: workshops, walks, and collective altar building or ceremony. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY with deep roots in Detroit, MI and Taiwan. @kimberchou
Jill Cohen-Nuñez (they/them) is a Dominican-American artist from the Bronx, New York. Combining pre-Columbian Caribbean and Jewish ancestries with personal mythology, Cohen-Nuñez investigates memory, the formation and evolution of rituals, folklore, and spiritual practices using wood, ceramics, stone, glass, and metal. Through these arduous methods of creating, their work reflects on generational loss of connection to culture and land through migration and assimilation. In 2023, they were awarded a New York Community Trust Van Lier Fellowship at Wave Hill and have received grants and scholarships from the Connor Merit Awards, Urban Glass, the Oki Doki studio, and an NYFA city artist corps grant. Cohen-Nuñez has participated in residencies at Haverford college, the Newark Print Shop, Manhattan Graphics Center, MASS MoCA, Chashama, and Modern Art Foundry. They have exhibited work at the National Sculpture Society, Bronxartspace, Center for Performance Research, Fordham University, Baad! Bronx Academy of Art and Dance, the New York Botanical Garden, and the Jane Hartsook Gallery at the Greenwich House. They hold a BA in studio art from CUNY City College. @mosslands__
Utsa Hazarika (she/her) is an artist and writer based in Queens. Her research-based practice ranges across video, installation and sculpture, and explores how an interdisciplinary dialogue between art and social research can push us to think about power, memory and resistance. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including a solo exhibition at the Queens Museum (US), and group shows at Museum of the City of New York (US), Hessel Museum of Art (US) and Cemeti Institute for Art and Society (Indonesia). She has been awarded residencies and fellowships in Asia and the United States, including Pioneer Works (US), Asian Cultural Council (US), Lijiang Studio (China), and Khoj International Artists’ Association (India). She holds an MFA in Fine Arts from The New School, an MPhil in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge, and attended the Whitney Independent Study Program. Her art and academic research has been published in Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology (UK), Trans Asia Photography Review (US) and The Caravan (India). @utsahazarika
Landon Newton (she/her) is an artist, gardener, and independent researcher. Her interdisciplinary practice considers the reciprocal relationships between plants and people; incorporating installation and site-specific works to explore themes of permanence, historical distortion, care, and maintenance using living plants as materials and participants. Her work has been exhibited at The Milstein Center, Barnard College, (upcoming); The Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna; Frieze New York; local_30 with A.I.R. Gallery, Warsaw; Tjaden Gallery, Cornell University; WIENWOCHE, Vienna; Czong Institute for Contemporary Art, South Korea; and the Queens Museum among others. Her ongoing project, The Abortion Herb Garden, is a collaborative and research-based installation focusing on abortifacient, emmenagogic, and contraceptive herbs explored through gardens, participatory workshops, performances, and site-specific sculpture. She has been an artist-in-residence at Denniston Hill, NY; Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, VA; the Studios at MASS MoCA, MA; the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, NY; and Marble House Project, VT. Peer-reviewed publications include, you are here, The Journal of Creative Geography, University of Arizona, and Cultivate Journal, The Feminist Journal of the Center of Women’s Studies, University of York. Workshops and Guest Speaker engagements include Barnard College; SUNY Purchase; Bard College; the Art, Culture, and Technology program at MIT; and Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Her work has been discussed in Gagosian Quarterly; On Seeing, Substack, by Roxane Gay; Artnet; and Hyperallergic. She received a BA in history from Smith College and an MFA in photography from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She works and gardens in New York City. @theabortionherbgarden
Mamoun Nukumanu (he/him) is a Brooklyn based interdisciplinary artist that guides living trees in temporal dances. Born on Long Island, Nukumanu’s work explores the semiotic entanglement of ecology, mind and body to create doorways to other worlds. Deeply passionate about ecological regeneration, he imagines the growth of symbiotic futures through the reforestation of the earth and the reestablishment of the ecology commons through the collective cultivation of living tree cities. Nukumanu graduated from NYU Gallatin in 2019 and proceeded to work at Terreform ONE in Brooklyn for five years on the design of a living tree house prototype. He plants his tree sculptures in convergence with the will of fate, with work currently growing across the world, including New York, Amsterdam, Puerto Rico, and Portugal. @nukumanu
Juan-Manuel Pinzon (he/him) is an artist based in New York City. Juan studied economics at Oberlin College (’18), completed the 9-month program at the Krenov School of Fine Woodworking (’19) and earned his MFA in Craft/Material Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University (‘22). He is currently a fellow at Socrates Sculpture Park and has attended residencies at Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT, The Ellis Beauregard Foundation in Rockland, ME, and Stove Works in Chattanooga, TN. He has exhibited work across the country, most recently at Pascall Hall, Rockport, ME and Cierah Gallery in New York, NY. @juan.manuel.pinzon
Vick Quezada (they/them) currently serves as an Assistant Professor of Art Practice at Hampshire College in Western Massachusetts and lives in New Haven, Connecticut. In 2022, Quezada was a Fellow at Yale’s Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration. In 2021, they received the prestigious US Latinx Art Forum Fellowship co-sponsored by Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship and the Ford Foundation. In 2020 Quezada was hand selected from a “large-scale survey” of 40 emerging artists from the US and Puerto Rico to be featured in El Museo del Barrio’s groundbreaking, La Trienal. In 2019, Quezada was the artist-in-residence at New York University’s Latinx Project. Quezada was selected as the University Massachusetts at Amherst Contemporary Arts Curatorial Fellow in 2018, along with Fred Wilson, who curated the show “Five Takes on African Art”. Their work has been featured in Hyperallergic, BOMB Magazine, The Boston Globe, The New York Times, Art News, Trans Studies Quarterly: Duke University Press, and Remezcla. Quezada received a Bachelors from University Texas at El Paso and their MFA from University Massachusetts at Amherst. @vickquezada
Petra Szilagyi (they/them) is an artist and student of the Super Natural. The product of a nomadic Afro-Caribbean/Hungarian, Petra has traveled from Japan, to Nigeria and many places in between, in a calling to seek the inexplicable, the unquantifiable and rich anti-structure spaces. They received their BA from Williams College and MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. @petrasyzygy
Nala C. Turner (she/her) is a visual artist working across multiple disciplines of art-making and healing such as ceramics, sculpture, somatics, and art therapy. Nala earned her M.P.S. in Art Therapy and Creativity Development from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY; and previously received her B.A. in Psychology and a B.F.A in Ceramics from Truman State University in Kirksville, MO. Her ceramic works, commissions, and public art have been exhibited at Companion Gallery, Humboldt, TN, Charlie Cummings Gallery, Gainesville, FL, Flood Plain Art Gallery, St. Louis, MO, The Burton at Bideford, Bideford, UK, New Brewery Arts, Cirencester, UK , and The Hub, Sleaford, Lincolnshire, UK. Public art installations include Healing Landscapes (in production), Socrates Park, Queens, NY; and Queen City, Metropolitan Park, Arlington, VA. Turner previously was awarded the commission for New York’s The Town Hall’s first inaugural Lena Horne Prize for Artists Creating Social Impact award, celebrating Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter and visual artist, Solange Knowles, in 2020. @carlynne.ceramics
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SUPPORT
Major support for The Socrates Annual Fellowship & Exhibition comes from the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional support is provided by Agnes Gund, Charina Foundation, the Sidney E. Frank Foundation, Devra Freelander Artist Fund, and Lambent Foundation, with in-kind support provided by Spacetime C.C. Funding is also provided in part, by public funds from the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the New York City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts.
ABOUT SOCRATES SCULPTURE PARK
For over 365 years, Socrates Sculpture Park has been an award winning model of public art production, community activism, and socially inspired place-making. Most recently Socrates was honored with the Public Art Dialogue 2023 Founders Award. Over 1,200 artists have created and exhibited new works on its five waterfront acres and outdoor studio facilities. Past exhibiting artists include Agnes Denes, Jeffrey Gibson, Guadalupe Maravilla, Virginia Overton, Jean Shin, Sable Elyse Smith, Nari Ward, Meg Webster, and Hank Willis Thomas.
Socrates is free and open to the public 365 days a year from 9am to sunset. It is located at 32-01 Vernon Boulevard (at Broadway) in Long Island City, New York. Socrates Sculpture Park is a not-for-profit organization licensed by NYC Parks to manage and program Socrates Sculpture Park, a New York City public park
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Socrates Sculpture Park unveils Trailblazing 2024 Season championing resilience, environmental consciousness, and migratory narratives
Suchitra Mattai’s first solo NYC Show
Long Island City, NY –
Socrates Sculpture Park, established in 1986 in Queens as a collaborative effort between artists and community members, is thrilled to announce the artists participating in its 2024 season. This year the platform for artists at Socrates has been reimagined by Kaitlin Garcia-Maestas, Director of Exhibitions and Curator, to challenge traditional notions of public art. Themes of migration, mapping, ecology, identity, and materiality—including textiles and plants—are all present in the work on view along the East River waterfront Park this year.
The 2024 summer exhibition is an immersive installation by internationally acclaimed, Indo-Guayanese and LA-based artist Suchitra Mattai. Drawing upon themes of identity, migration, and memory, the exhibition Suchitra Mattai: We are nomads, we are dreamers invites viewers to explore the intersections of cultural and personal histories through sculptured textiles, most notably heirloom, vintage saris. Her thought-provoking installations will transform the landscape of Socrates Sculpture Park, offering visitors a profound and immersive artistic experience coupled with dance performances. The exhibition is on view Saturday, May 11 – Sunday, August 25, 2024.
“Suchitra Mattai’s work embodies the spirit of experimentation, innovation, and exploration that defines our park,” said Kaitlin Garcia-Maestas, Curator and Director of Exhibitions at Socrates Sculpture Park. “I’m excited to welcome Suchitra’s thrilling vision to Socrates this summer, where it will hopefully serve as a metaphorical bridge connecting the East River to the diverse diasporic communities of Astoria, offering them a space for creative refuge and respite along the water’s edge.”
Socrates will open its fall exhibition The Socrates Annual 2024 on September 14th. The theme for this exhibition featuring early career artists is ‘Invasive Species’ and embodies Garcia-Maestas’ commitment to expanding the tradition of outdoor sculpture towards a richer inclusivity of decolonial perspectives and materials while also addressing urgent environmental challenges. Through this theme, artists Kimberly Chou Tsun An, Jill Cohen-Nuñez, Utsa Hazarika, Landon Newton, Mamoun Nukumanu, Juan-Manuel Pinzon, Vick Quezada, Petra Szilagyi, and Nala C. Turner will explore the parallels between the plight of invasive species and the human experience of migration, shedding light on stories often left untold. The show will run until April 6, 2025.
In addition to its innovative art exhibitions, Socrates will continue its commitment to free public programming with offerings for all ages, across multiple disciplines. Returning partners in the roster of events include Fortune Society’s Creative Arts Program, The Metropolitan Opera’s Summer Recital Series, and Ballet Folklórico Mexicano de Nueva York’s Annual Guelaguetza. Social-justice circus theater Circus Amok! will also return to the Park with fun for the whole family.
“I’m excited to kick-off this new season with our groundbreaking collaboration with Suchitra Mattai, a re-imagined platform for our Socrates Artist Fellows and the return of our critical, ongoing partnerships with beloved local arts and community organizations.” said Katie Dixon, Executive Director at Socrates Sculpture Park.
Socrates Sculpture Park is open 365 days a year, from 9 am to sunset. Admission is always free. For more information about the incredible array of exhibitions and events for 2024, please visit socratessculpturepark.org.
ABOUT SOCRATES
For over 35 years, Socrates Sculpture Park has been an award winning model of public art production, community activism, and socially inspired place making. Most recently Socrates was honored with the Public Art Dialogue 2023 Founders Award. Over 1,200 artists have created and exhibited new works on its five waterfront acres and outdoor studio facilities. Past exhibiting artists include Agnes Denes, Torkwase Dyson, Jeffrey Gibson, Guadalupe Maravilla, Virginia Overton, Jean Shin, Sable Elyse Smith, Nari Ward, Meg Webster, and Hank Willis Thomas. Socrates is free and open to the public 365 days a year from 9am to sunset. It is located at 32-01 Vernon Boulevard (at Broadway) in Long Island City, New York. Socrates Sculpture Park is a not for profit organization licensed by NYC Parks to manage and program Socrates Sculpture Park, a New York City public park.
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Socrates Annual 2024 Open Call
The Socrates Sculpture Park Annual Fellowship 2024 Open Call
New Cohort added to this year’s Open Call
Long Island City, NY, November 2, 2023 – Socrates Sculpture Park, the internationally renowned outdoor site for public art and community engagement located along the East River in Long Island City, New York, is proud to announce its Open Call for Proposals for The 2024 Socrates Annual Fellowship. This year, the Fellowship expands to include more early-career artists, with up to ten projects in two distinct cohorts. Each Artist Fellow selected through the Open Call is awarded a production stipend and access to the Park’s outdoor studio facilities, as well as technical and administrative support for the creation and installation of an artwork within the Park. The Fellowship culminates in The Socrates Annual, an exhibition that showcases Fellows’ completed works, opening in September 2024 and closing in March 2025.
With this year’s prompt, “Invasive Species”, Open Call applicants are encouraged to consider the legacies of species migration alongside the themes and myths of invasion related to people, animals and plants. Artists will apply to participate in one of two cohorts. The first cohort invites site-specific ecological interventions that will integrate with the landscape, while projects in the second cohort will have a distinct and considered material approach, but not necessarily a living element.
Since it was formalized in 2000, The Fellowship has welcomed an impressive array of artists including Leilah Babirye (2018), Sable Elyse Smith (2016), David Brooks (2009), Hank Willis Thomas (2006), Orly Genger (2004), and Sanford Biggers (2001).
“After the incredible and moving success of the previous year’s cohort, bringing their individual interpretations of material ontology, sustainability, and world-building within our dynamic park, we are excited to open up the opportunity for more than one cohort this year, with the intention of emphasizing histories of migration.” said Kaitlin Garcia-Maestas, Curator and Director of Exhibitions at Socrates Sculpture Park. “This expansion will not just provide a larger platform for early career, interdisciplinary artists, but will allow for a greater opportunity for visitors and our local community to witness artists activating the entire Park through ecological interventions and on-site fabrication in Socrates’ unique open-air studio.”
“We are so excited to expand our long-standing Fellowship this year, in the spirit of increasing access to Socrates’ important platform for artists and in hopes of growing the opportunity for participation and involvement with our community,” said Katie Dixon, Interim Executive Director of Socrates Sculpture Park. “With Kaitlin’s vision for the prompt ‘Invasive Species,’ we’re leading with a provocation and we’re excited to see how artists will respond. We look forward to the conversations and interactions their work will spark among our friends and neighbors grappling with climate change with us here on the coastal edge of Western Queens.”
Once an illegal dumpsite, in 1986, a coalition of artists and community members led by artist Mark di Suvero transformed the land into an outdoor exhibition space. Now a world-renowned New York City public park, Socrates Sculpture Park supports artists with resources and space and believes in the importance of creative expression for urban improvement. The park serves as a hub for cultural events, contemporary exhibitions, multi-disciplinary performances, and arts education.
For full details on The Fellowship Open Call for both Cohorts 1 and 2, please visit https://socratessculpturepark.org/open-call-2024
ABOUT SOCRATES
For over 35 years, Socrates Sculpture Park has been an award winning model of public art production, community activism, and socially inspired place making. Most recently Socrates was honored with the Public Art Dialogue 2023 Founders Award. Over 1,200 artists have created and exhibited new works on its five waterfront acres and outdoor studio facilities. Past exhibiting artists include Agnes Denes, Jeffrey Gibson, Guadalupe Maravilla, Virginia Overton, Jean Shin, Sable Elyse Smith, Nari Ward, Meg Webster, and Hank Willis Thomas. Socrates is free and open to the public 365 days a year from 9am to sunset. It is located at 32-01 Vernon Boulevard (at Broadway) in Long Island City, New York. Socrates Sculpture Park is a not for profit organization licensed by NYC Parks to manage and program Socrates Sculpture Park, a New York City public park.
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For more information on Socrates Sculpture Park, please give us a shout: Debbie Pressman at Debbie@positivejampr.com
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Socrates Sculpture Park artist fellows presents their interpretations on transformation in The Socrates Annual 2023
The Socrates Annual 2023 opens September 30, 2023
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** The opening date of the exhibition is October 1, due to weather conditions. **
Long Island City, NY, August 22, 2023 – Socrates Sculpture Park presents The Socrates Annual 2023 on view Saturday, September 30, 2023 through March 24, 2024. From an abandoned landfill to an art space, a public park, and outdoor venue, Socrates is a space that has thrived on changes. For this year, The Socrates Annual 2023 Fellowship prompted artists to create artwork from the theme “transformation.”
The Socrates Annual exhibition marks the culmination of the 2023 Socrates Annual Fellowship awarded to six artists, Ashley Harris, Ndivhuho Rasengani, Bat-Ami Rivlin, Kate Rusek, Maryam Turkey, and Stefania Urist. This competitive program provides funding, access to the Park’s outdoor studio, and the production support needed to realize ambitious public artworks. These five projects reflect on diverse stages of growth, change, and renewal while also invoking a keen understanding of how visitors use this space, informed by the artists’ firsthand experience fabricating these works on-site over the summer. Many of these works are constructed with found and recycled materials that have been ingeniously repurposed, breathing new life into objects that were once discarded or considered undesirable. Collectively, these artists compel us to value thehistories embedded in materials and the surrounding landscape.
“The transformation of these projects, both physically and conceptually, over the past few months has been incredibly inspiring to witness.” said Kaitlin Garcia-Maestas, Curator & Director of Exhibitions of Socrates Sculpture Park. “This fellowship and its culminating exhibition underscore the vital perspective that artists contribute to our societal understanding of waste and how they can assist arts organizations in reimagining more sustainable production practices.”
The six participating artists were selected from over 250 applicants by a curatorial jury consisting of Misa Jeffereis, Associate Curator at Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis and Sara O’Keeffe, Senior Curator at Art OMI; as well as Kaitlin Garcia-Maestas, Curator & Director of Exhibitions and Tamsin Dillon, former Executive Director at Socrates Sculpture Park. Projects were created on-site at the Park’s outdoor studios with financial support and technical assistance as part of the Socrates Annual Fellowship. Kate Rusek is the 2023 Devra Freelander Artist Fellow.
“It’s been wonderful to get to know the artists this summer and to watch their process and practice evolve in public,” said Katie Dixon, Interim Executive Director of Socrates Sculpture Park. “We offer a singular opportunity for artists to experiment and collaborate with our Socrates community and all of our Fellows this year tested their own boundaries and limits in surprising ways. I’m excited to get to see the works installed and to witness how they will transform our experience of the Park and each other.”
Socrates Sculpture Park is excited to welcome back SkowheganPERFORMS during the opening reception of The Socrates Annual 2023 on September 30, 2023. SkowheganPERFORMS is an exhibition of new, site-specific performance art by Skowhegan alumni at Socrates Sculpture Park. The event shares the same thematic prompt, “transformation,” as The Socrates Annual 2023. Performances may be one moment, ongoing, or repeated over the course of the afternoon at different locations in the Park. Various degrees of audience participation may be encouraged. All will share a responsiveness to the landscape and/or history of Socrates, as well as the works on view.
The Socrates Annual 2023 is on view Saturday, September 30, 2023 – March 24, 2024. A public opening will be held on Saturday, September 30, in conjunction with a tour by the Artist Fellows and SkowheganPERFORMS. Socrates Sculpture Park is open 365 days a year, from 9 am to sunset. Admission is free.
For full details visit https://socratessculpturepark.org/the-socrates-annual-2023
The exhibition press kit is available for download here.
ARTWORK DESCRIPTIONS
Ashley Harris and Ndivhuho Rasengani
Dwell within the Light
Glass, concrete, acrylic, steel, wood, and plants
Dwell Within the Light traces the Park’s trajectory from its origins as the ancestral land of the Lenape, Carnarsie, and Matinecock People, through its phase as a dumpsite, to its ultimate transformation into an arts space. These sculptures, forged from a fusion of found materials, pivot and morph in response to the Park’s natural forces – wind, rain, and human interaction. Together, these works intertwine narratives of history and landscape through their unique material interconnections.
Bat-Ami Rivlin
Untitled (12 tubs)
Steel and reclaimed bathtubs
Additional production support from Artis Contemporary
Untitled (12 Tubs) is a sculptural gesture intertwining the landscape with the small, intimate spaces of twelve suspended bathtubs. Facing inwards, the bathtubs create an interior space of chambers, allowing the viewer to simultaneously experience extreme interior and exterior views of the Park. The bathtub, being a unit of measurement for the industrialized “average” human mass, creates a space that systematizes the human form. This duality of function, both intimate in its closeness to the body and alienating in its quantification of flesh, transforms into an architectural element as the object repeats over and over again. The bathtub-wheel carves into the air, placing frames for the body in impossible positions in space.
Kate Rusek
Imagined Fungal Emergence
Reclaimed aluminum, aluminum fasteners
Using reclaimed aluminum blinds, Rusek creates an immersive tapestry inspired by clusters of fungi. Referencing both natural and manmade architectural structures, the installation features archways and openings that invite visitors to navigate through the suspended forms. Notice how each cluster draws strength from its neighboring component while also relying on the supportive embrace of the trees. Crafted predominantly from waste sourced in New York City, this work challenges preconceived notions of value, and imagines a future where each element holds regenerative potential. *2023 Devra Freelander Artist Fellow
Maryam Turkey
Deconstructed
Metal, foam, stucco, pigment, and reclaimed wood
Drawing inspiration from her childhood in Baghdad, where mud structures bore the imprint of human touch, this immersive work echoes the architectural imperfections and textures that fascinated the artist as a child. Facilitating tactile interactions through its textured surfaces and intricate puzzle-like form, the artwork serves as a juxtaposition to the prevailing tide of mechanized construction and architectural rigidity. Eliciting a palpable sense of play, Deconstructed embodies a timeless narrative, celebrating the enduring connection between humanity and its architectural creations amidst an evolving world dominated by technology.
Stefania Urist
Desire Lines
Phragmites, steel wire, and rebar
Formed in the shape of New York waterway maps, these fences are handwoven with phragmites, an invasive European reed grass now thriving in North American wetlands. While phragmites impose monocultures and suppress native flora, they also, paradoxically, serve as a carbon sink, absorbing emissions, cleansing waterways, and enhancing storm resilience. This work addresses the complex factors of human-defined borders and the migration of species. In an era of rapid global change, the artist prompts us to consider who has the authority to determine the habitats for certain species.
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SUPPORT
Major support for The Socrates Annual Fellowship & Exhibition comes from the Jerome Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Additional support is provided by AG Foundation, Charina Foundation, the Sidney E. Frank Foundation, Devra Freelander Artist Fund, Lambent Foundation, and The New York Community Trust, with in-kind support provided by Spacetime C.C.
Additional funding is provided in part, by public funds from the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the New York City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts.
ABOUT SOCRATES
For over 35 years, Socrates Sculpture Park has been an award winning model of public art production, community activism, and socially inspired place-making. Most recently Socrates was honored with the Public Art Dialogue 2023 Founders Award. Over 1,200 artists have created and exhibited new works on its five waterfront acres and outdoor studio facilities. Past exhibiting artists include Agnes Denes, Jeffrey Gibson, Guadalupe Maravilla, Virginia Overton, Jean Shin, Sable Elyse Smith, Nari Ward, Meg Webster, and Hank Willis Thomas.
Socrates is free and open to the public 365 days a year from 9am to sunset. It is located at 32-01 Vernon Boulevard (at Broadway) in Long Island City, New York. Socrates Sculpture Park is a not-for-profit organization licensed by NYC Parks to manage and program Socrates Sculpture Park, a New York City public park
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Socrates Sculpture Park Announces The 2023 Socrates Annual Artist Fellows
The Mark di Suvero-founded institution for contemporary public art awards six artists for the annual Fellowship Program
Long Island City, NY, June 21, 2023 – Socrates Sculpture Park is pleased to announce the recipients of The 2023 Socrates Annual Fellowship. The competitive program reflects the Park’s commitment to artistic experimentation and nurturing artists’ careers. This important training ground for early career artists allows the selected Fellows to gain experience creating large-scale public art, utilizing Socrates’ outdoor studio in Long Island City, Queens. Recipients were selected through an open-call application process. The thematic prompt for this year was “Transformation.”
The recipients of The 2023 Socrates Annual Fellowship are Ashley Harris and Ndivhuho Rasengani, Bat-Ami Rivlin, Kate Rusek, Maryam Turkey, and Stefania Urist. Selected from a pool of 250 applicants, this year’s cohort reflects the diversity of NYC working artists with varied artistic approaches, media and subject matter.
“We are thrilled to welcome this dynamic group of artists to the Park this summer. This year’s cohort is considering ideas related to material ontology, sustainability, and world-building, while also offering timely reflections on the Park’s current state of structural and environmental transformation.” said Kaitlin Garcia-Maestas, Curator and Director of Exhibitions of Socrates Sculpture Park. “We’re also excited for visitors and our local community to witness the ongoing fabrication process in our unique, open-air studio throughout the summer months.”
The 2023 Socrates Annual curatorial jury included Kaitlin Garcia-Maestas, Curator & Director of Exhibitions at Socrates Sculpture Park with two curatorial advisors, Misa Jeffereis, Associate Curator, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, and Sara O’Keeffe, Senior Curator, Art OMI. ‘The Socrates Annual’ fellowship was formalized in 2000 and have included artists such as Sable Elyse Smith (2016), David Brooks (2009), Leilah Babirye (2018), Orly Genger (2004), Sanford Biggers (2001), and Torkwase Dyson (2015).
Artist Fellows are each awarded a production stipend, access to the Park’s outdoor artist studio, as well as the technical and administrative support needed to realize ambitious public art projects. The fellowship culminates in the fall with ‘The Socrates Annual’ exhibition, opening on September 30th.
Support
Major support for The Socrates Annual Fellowship & Exhibition comes from The Devra Freelander Artist Fund, Jerome Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional support is provided by the Charina Foundation, the Sidney E. Frank Foundation, Agnes Gund, Lambent Foundation, with in-kind support provided by Spacetime C.C.
Additional funding is provided in part, by public funds from the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the New York City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts.
About Socrates Sculpture Park
For over 35 years, Socrates Sculpture Park has been a model of public art production, community activism, and socially inspired place-making. Over 1,000 artists have created and exhibited new works on its five waterfront acres and outdoor studio facilities. Socrates is free and open to the public 365 days a year from 9am to sunset. It is located at 32-01 Vernon Boulevard (at Broadway) in Long Island City, New York. Socrates Sculpture Park is a not-for-profit organization licensed by NYC Parks to manage and program Socrates Sculpture Park, a New York City public park.
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